gender bias

While sexual harassment is certainly an issue, we need to look deeper at gender bias. Women who do make it to the upper ranks have often been told that they were only given that job or that award because they are women, implying that the field is admitting less-deserving women simply to increase their numbers. In fact, these studies show that many of the women in science must be more capable than the men, to even have advanced in the field. And who wants to admit that?

Job insecurity or job discrimination based on class, gender or race, is bad for your health. It is a perversity of work that the language of ‘risks and rewards’ is used to justify soaring boardroom pay packets and the growing income inequality at work. But the workers most frequently compelled to take genuine risks – to life, to limb, to health – are those who receive the lowest financial rewards.

The wage gap between men and women in the U.S. shrunk drastically in the 1980s and early 1990s, as women joined the workforce in increasing numbers and earned degrees at higher rates, but the gap has remained relatively stagnant since the mid- to late 1990s. There's one major detriment to financial equality that women can't seem to shake: motherhood.